The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.480 Hello, and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mardad.

00:00:06.440 As has become usual now, I think, we are live. So if you have any questions, please put them

00:00:12.000 into the chat and I will happily address them. Today, we're going to be talking about the roots

00:00:19.200 of the Syrian civil war and be doing a little bit of a deep dive on that. To understand Syria,

00:00:26.680 the first place to start in any geopolitical analysis is, well, the geography. And if you

00:00:32.740 look at a map of Syria, this is one by Suryak, who is an excellent mapper on Twitter, on X.

00:00:41.540 Where's his name? Oh, it doesn't appear here. But he's really, really good. And I love his maps,

00:00:47.380 and I use them all the time. And I'm not getting paid to say this. But anyway, this is a good map

00:00:53.840 of who's controlling which bits of Syria. And what I want to start with is the geography

00:01:01.360 and the importance of Damascus. If you look at Syria and Lebanon and Israel, there is the West

00:01:10.340 Lebanon mountain chain that starts somewhere around here in today's Turkey, in Iskanderun,

00:01:17.420 goes all the way along the coast, hugging the coast into the country of Lebanon itself and ending

00:01:27.080 somewhere near northern Israel. So that's the West Lebanon mountain chain. And then there's the East

00:01:35.100 Lebanon mountain chain. It's considerably shorter and ends with the Galilee panhandle. And behind

00:01:43.980 those two mountain chains is the city of Damascus. And Damascus is really important because it has an

00:01:49.980 abundance of water, excellent agricultural land, at least before the population exploded. And it is

00:01:56.800 the place that you want to place your military forces if you are to try to dominate Syria itself,

00:02:05.920 as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and modern day Israel. So the importance of Syria really rests on the city

00:02:14.680 of Damascus. It's protected by these mountain chains. It's protected by the Golan Heights.

00:02:20.820 It's got an abundance of water. It's the desert is to its rear. And this is where you want to

00:02:28.560 place your forces to dominate the whole Levant region. And really, it's the centerpiece of the

00:02:35.920 whole of the whole geography of the Middle East. There isn't anywhere like it until you get to Baghdad,

00:02:42.700 which is why historically, the two most important cities in the Levant have been Damascus, Baghdad,

00:02:49.700 and to a lesser extent, Aleppo here in the north. And if you can dominate Damascus,

00:02:55.540 and you are on technological parity with your enemies, you can dominate the whole region.

00:03:03.360 The reason the Crusades failed, the main reason the Crusades failed, was because the Crusaders were

00:03:10.400 too focused on getting from Antioch here to Jerusalem. And they took the coastal route,

00:03:18.700 instead of taking the interior route and securing their flank properly,

00:03:23.340 and hugging the river going from Aleppo, through Hama, through Homs, through Damascus itself.

00:03:32.300 And if you control these four cities, and you have technological parity,

00:03:36.860 if you control Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus,

00:03:42.520 you pretty much dominate the eastern Mediterranean coast,

00:03:46.460 because nobody can properly muster a force against you,

00:03:50.720 especially if you have some naval assets to sort of fight along the coast as well.

00:03:56.560 So holding Damascus is really key to holding the rest of the region.

00:04:02.900 The fertility of the plains there, the availability of water,

00:04:06.840 the fact that this is the oldest inhabited city in the world,

00:04:10.100 continuously inhabited city in the world,

00:04:12.080 all show you the importance of this strategic location.

00:04:17.340 So that's what you want to think about first, when you think about Syria.

00:04:20.700 If you dominate these four cities, you dominate all of Syria,

00:04:25.240 and therefore you dominate the coast.

00:04:27.580 And if you dominate Damascus, Israel is immediately placed at risk.

00:04:31.780 And the reason the Crusades failed was because they couldn't take Damascus.

00:04:35.380 And the most important city in the early Islamic empire was Damascus.

00:04:40.740 So Islam started here, in Mecca and Medina and Saudi Arabia.

00:04:46.200 But really, they became a major threat and a major problem once they took Damascus.

00:04:52.540 And all of the fighting in the early Islamic history between the Sunnis and the Shia,

00:04:56.720 a lot of it was focused on who is the ruler of Damascus,

00:05:00.400 and that was Muawiyah.

00:05:01.480 And he founded the Umayyad state, the first proper dynastic Islamic caliphate

00:05:08.180 that went on to expand all the way from India to Spain.

00:05:14.060 So Damascus really is sort of a keystone city in world geography.

00:05:19.900 It's enormously important.

00:05:23.060 But Syria is a deeply divided country.

00:05:26.340 Ethnically and religiously, this country is a huge mosaic.

00:05:32.140 This is a pretty good map that I found on Reddit.

00:05:35.040 In yellow are the Sunni Arabs.

00:05:38.040 In the darker color, the darker yellow-brown, I want to call it, are the Kurds.

00:05:44.380 And then the Alawites, who are a heretical extremist Shia sect,

00:05:51.660 live in the mountains here.

00:05:52.880 And then you have the Christians dispersed in red in a bunch of different places in Syria.

00:05:59.840 Their numbers have reduced dramatically as a result of the civil war in Syria.

00:06:07.900 So this is the geography and the ethnic composition of the country.

00:06:11.880 And then in the 1960s, there was massive turmoil in the Middle East.

00:06:16.940 This is something that I've addressed previously.

00:06:20.040 Because it had been a generation since the end of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1923,

00:06:24.520 which left the Muslim world without a center of gravity.

00:06:29.200 And different ideologies tried to come in and say,

00:06:32.120 we are going to offer an alternative

00:06:34.780 to end the humiliation of the Arabs at the hands of Israel.

00:06:38.580 And one of these alternatives was Ba'athism,

00:06:42.000 a secular ideology, a secular nationalist ideology

00:06:45.760 that wanted to unite all of the Arab world

00:06:51.740 under the leadership of the Ba'ath Party.

00:06:54.580 It only took hold properly in Syria and in Iraq.

00:06:58.220 And promptly, because of the importance of Baghdad versus Damascus,

00:07:02.900 fell into infighting.

00:07:04.680 And they had a bunch of conflicts between the mostly hidden conflicts

00:07:09.160 over who gets to dominate the Arab world in the future.

00:07:15.340 So to start with understanding Syria,

00:07:17.780 you've got to have this background there.

00:07:19.980 The Ba'ath Party, you know,

00:07:22.940 their logo is the Palestinian flag

00:07:26.160 along with a map of all of the countries of the Arab League

00:07:30.440 with the slogan being

00:07:32.760 one Arab nation or ummah

00:07:36.100 with an immortal message or mission.

00:07:39.620 So this is what they this is what they believe in.

00:07:44.920 And for them, their claim to power was that

00:07:48.780 we are going to rejuvenate the Arab world

00:07:52.480 in a way that permits us to defeat Israel

00:07:56.880 and therefore the West behind Israel.

00:07:59.900 This was the driving ideology.

00:08:01.620 Because they were secular

00:08:05.400 and didn't want a religious ideology governing them

00:08:10.340 and because they themselves were Alawites,

00:08:13.580 meaning that the Sunni Muslims view them as heretics,

00:08:17.900 as unbelievers,

00:08:19.200 and therefore unworthy of leadership,

00:08:22.260 the immediate reaction from the Muslim Brotherhood,

00:08:25.080 which, as I'd mentioned in the past,

00:08:27.000 an organization founded in 1923,

00:08:30.200 1926,

00:08:31.620 or 27,

00:08:33.360 sorry, 1928,

00:08:34.760 with the explicit objective

00:08:36.500 of founding a Muslim state again

00:08:39.820 and of ending nationalism

00:08:42.060 so that there can be pan-Islamism instead,

00:08:45.520 the Muslim Brotherhood reacted

00:08:47.120 by launching an insurgency.

00:08:49.780 And that insurgency

00:08:50.860 kicked around from the 60s,

00:08:53.920 but it really peaked in 1979

00:08:57.260 when the Muslim Brotherhood

00:09:00.100 managed to massacre a pretty large number

00:09:04.080 of Syrian military officers

00:09:05.640 in the city of Aleppo

00:09:08.020 in order to kick off a broader war.

00:09:11.760 And the reaction to that attack from the Muslim Brotherhood

00:09:16.600 ended up being the Hama Massacre,

00:09:18.920 the famous massacre of 1982,

00:09:21.820 where something between 10,000 and 40,000,

00:09:26.380 I lean towards the lower estimates,

00:09:28.880 10,000 to 20,000 people were murdered in the city of Hama

00:09:34.020 using artillery and tanks and whatnot

00:09:37.220 in order to just end that insurgency

00:09:40.540 and in order to make an example.

00:09:43.300 And remember,

00:09:44.280 Syria rests on the control of this chain of cities,

00:09:49.360 Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus.

00:09:51.880 And so if you manage to take Homs

00:09:53.520 or if you manage to take Hama,

00:09:55.460 you pretty much cut the country in two.

00:09:58.160 And so the Assad saw that

00:09:59.580 as a major threat to their survival,

00:10:01.580 and they reacted in a very Middle Eastern way

00:10:06.120 by conducting an exemplary massacre in Hama,

00:10:11.680 and that succeeded in ending the insurgency.

00:10:14.580 But at the same time, since 1975,

00:10:17.000 there had been a civil war in Lebanon.

00:10:19.800 And if you look historically

00:10:21.300 at the invasions of Damascus

00:10:24.180 and the number of times that Damascus was captured,

00:10:26.440 one of the big routes was through,

00:10:32.240 was basically invasions from Egypt

00:10:34.660 with the armies marching up along the coast,

00:10:39.120 bifurcating in Palestine, Israel,

00:10:42.780 going up along the coast,

00:10:44.640 but also splitting to go through the interior

00:10:47.760 into the Bekaa Valley.

00:10:49.920 And then the mountains kind of recede

00:10:52.400 in this area here, Anjar,

00:10:56.440 and that allows armies

00:10:59.760 to cross the East Lebanon mountain chain

00:11:03.260 and invade Damascus.

00:11:05.040 So this was always a threat

00:11:06.900 to the Syrian government

00:11:08.700 that somehow they will be invaded

00:11:12.640 by forces that find a land supply route.

00:11:17.680 Therefore, they don't depend so much on the coast.

00:11:19.980 And remember, the coast of Lebanon

00:11:22.260 is so narrow that you can't really

00:11:24.040 concentrate armies there.

00:11:25.340 You have to invade Lebanon

00:11:26.760 through the Bekaa.

00:11:28.200 And with Lebanon being very unstable,

00:11:31.220 that immediately becomes a threat

00:11:33.360 to Damascus itself.

00:11:35.420 So in Lebanon,

00:11:36.180 the war in Lebanon,

00:11:38.300 which actually probably deserves

00:11:40.660 a number of episodes,

00:11:43.160 the war in Lebanon was being fought

00:11:45.340 mainly between Christian militias

00:11:47.040 on the one side

00:11:48.320 and Palestinians

00:11:50.500 and Muslims on the other.

00:11:53.540 The Muslims sided with the Palestinians

00:11:55.700 because I covered this a lot

00:11:58.020 or in some detail

00:11:59.180 in a Brokenomics episode

00:12:01.340 about the Lebanese civil war

00:12:03.100 and what it means for Britain.

00:12:05.540 The Christians saw themselves

00:12:07.140 as defending Lebanon's identity

00:12:08.700 and defending the only country

00:12:10.800 in the Middle East

00:12:11.680 that is Christian dominated.

00:12:13.320 The Muslims and the Palestinians

00:12:15.460 wanted to use Lebanon

00:12:16.600 as a frontline state

00:12:17.820 to fight against Israel.

00:12:21.240 The Syrians,

00:12:22.480 because of their ideology

00:12:23.540 and because of geography,

00:12:25.340 saw this as an opportunity.

00:12:27.400 So they first intervened

00:12:29.360 in the civil war in Lebanon

00:12:30.520 on the side of the Christians

00:12:32.160 against the Palestinians

00:12:33.380 because the Palestinians

00:12:35.320 were too rowdy

00:12:36.300 and their militancy

00:12:38.720 was threatening Syria itself

00:12:40.820 because if Lebanon

00:12:42.660 gets invaded by the Israelis,

00:12:44.800 what do you know?

00:12:46.120 The Bekaa Valley,

00:12:47.500 this part of the country here,

00:12:49.000 gets captured

00:12:49.620 and when this part of the country

00:12:51.580 is captured,

00:12:52.860 Damascus is immediately under threat.

00:12:55.560 And if Damascus is dominated

00:12:56.820 by the Israelis,

00:12:58.140 then it's pretty much over

00:12:59.880 because of the importance

00:13:02.180 of the city of Damascus.

00:13:03.340 So this is the geographic

00:13:05.680 and historic context there.

00:13:10.040 Eventually,

00:13:11.080 the Lebanese Christians,

00:13:12.880 eventually two things happened.

00:13:14.860 First, the Lebanese Christians

00:13:16.140 began taking weapons from Israel.

00:13:18.840 Second, the Israelis

00:13:19.980 invaded southern Lebanon

00:13:21.640 to push the Palestinians back.

00:13:23.660 The first time they invaded

00:13:25.080 in 1978,

00:13:26.380 they took a very small strip

00:13:27.840 along the border,

00:13:29.760 mainly to defend the Galilee,

00:13:31.120 which, as you can see here,

00:13:34.040 this town is Kiryat Shmona,

00:13:35.780 the largest town

00:13:37.320 in what is referred to

00:13:38.980 as the Galilee Panhandle

00:13:40.380 or the Galilee Finger.

00:13:43.120 And this part

00:13:44.540 gets threatened regularly

00:13:46.880 from Lebanon,

00:13:47.580 so the Israelis come into this area

00:13:49.380 and secure themselves.

00:13:51.120 And this area is mixed.

00:13:52.820 It's Sunni,

00:13:53.960 it's Shia,

00:13:54.980 but it's also Christian.

00:13:56.820 And it means that

00:13:58.640 the Israelis

00:13:59.260 can get closer to Jizim,

00:14:01.560 a major Christian town,

00:14:03.280 at the southern tip

00:14:04.740 of Mount Lebanon.

00:14:06.640 And from there,

00:14:07.520 the whole of Mount Lebanon

00:14:08.380 opens to them,

00:14:09.560 which means that

00:14:10.460 the Bekaa

00:14:10.820 is militarily vulnerable

00:14:12.020 under the technology

00:14:13.240 that the Israelis have.

00:14:15.540 Damascus is vulnerable.

00:14:17.260 So the Syrians

00:14:18.320 are intervening

00:14:19.100 in the Lebanese civil war,

00:14:20.400 and at the same time,

00:14:21.380 they're at threat

00:14:22.020 domestically

00:14:22.900 from the Sunni Muslims,

00:14:24.700 who are a threat

00:14:26.360 to the Alawites

00:14:27.240 who dominate the Ba'ath Party.

00:14:29.740 And that is informing

00:14:32.360 Syrian decision-making.

00:14:34.520 And it leads the Syrians

00:14:35.920 initially to back the Christians

00:14:37.280 against the Palestinians,

00:14:38.700 but then it leads them

00:14:40.240 to back the Muslim side,

00:14:44.160 especially after 1982,

00:14:46.660 when the Israelis invade

00:14:48.540 all the way to Beirut

00:14:50.200 and expel the Palestinians

00:14:52.740 once and for all.

00:14:53.800 And now they dominate

00:14:55.740 the Beirut-Damascus highway,

00:14:58.320 meaning, obviously,

00:15:00.120 Damascus is under threat.

00:15:01.820 So this is the thinking

00:15:03.060 of the Syrians

00:15:03.720 in this time period.

00:15:07.900 Eventually, the Americans

00:15:09.220 broker some kind of agreement.

00:15:11.620 The Israelis break it

00:15:12.480 a couple of times,

00:15:13.540 but because the Syrians

00:15:15.180 can't do very much about it,

00:15:17.080 their air force got humiliated

00:15:19.120 by the Israelis in Lebanon.

00:15:20.840 They lost, I think,

00:15:22.620 70 jets in the span

00:15:24.160 of half an hour.

00:15:25.360 So the whole Syrian air force

00:15:26.600 gets destroyed over Lebanon.

00:15:28.860 And so a new stability emerges

00:15:30.320 where the Israelis

00:15:32.000 have a strong position in Lebanon,

00:15:34.100 but then the Syrians

00:15:36.160 start backing insurgent movements,

00:15:38.360 Muslim insurgent movements,

00:15:39.580 in partnership with the Iranians

00:15:42.900 and with the left.

00:15:43.660 These insurgencies

00:15:47.220 then eventually become Hezbollah.

00:15:49.780 And using Hezbollah,

00:15:52.200 the Syrians and their allies

00:15:54.880 slowly push Israel out,

00:15:57.600 first out of Beirut,

00:15:59.460 then out of Sidon on the coast,

00:16:02.020 and then the Israelis

00:16:03.820 remain in a security belt

00:16:06.520 covering this area

00:16:08.200 from around Rashaia here,

00:16:09.740 which is Druze,

00:16:10.880 to Jezine,

00:16:12.040 which is Christian,

00:16:13.680 and dominating

00:16:14.700 bits of South Lebanon,

00:16:16.860 especially along the border.

00:16:18.660 And they create

00:16:19.860 the security belt.

00:16:21.980 And the Israelis

00:16:23.160 don't forgive the Syrians.

00:16:25.000 They don't forgive the Syrians

00:16:26.620 for obvious reasons

00:16:27.620 because were it not

00:16:29.620 for the Syrians.

00:16:31.560 The Israelis would have helped

00:16:33.320 the Christians dominate Lebanon

00:16:34.860 and would have made

00:16:36.720 some kind of peace with Lebanon.

00:16:39.320 And that peace would have meant

00:16:41.660 that the Israeli northern flank

00:16:43.760 was secure

00:16:44.440 and that there was another

00:16:46.740 similar state,

00:16:49.000 ethno-religious,

00:16:49.920 ethno-nationalist,

00:16:51.520 dominating Lebanon,

00:16:53.360 allied with the West,

00:16:55.040 meaning that the coastal area

00:16:57.260 has become dominant

00:16:59.420 over the interior

00:17:01.200 and meaning that Damascus

00:17:03.180 is threatened.

00:17:04.840 So again,

00:17:05.300 it's all about the location

00:17:06.400 of Damascus.

00:17:08.640 Now, in 1990,

00:17:10.360 things change even more deeply.

00:17:13.180 The Lebanese civil war

00:17:14.620 is ongoing,

00:17:15.680 but Saddam Hussein

00:17:17.480 in Iraq

00:17:18.380 decides to settle

00:17:20.240 his score with Kuwait

00:17:21.680 and he invades Kuwait.

00:17:23.980 And the Americans

00:17:25.220 are absolutely terrified.

00:17:27.240 Saddam has a relatively

00:17:29.360 up-to-date Soviet military,

00:17:32.100 Soviet armed military.

00:17:33.660 Iraq and Syria,

00:17:35.000 you have to remember,

00:17:36.400 both rejected

00:17:37.360 the 1973 peace agreement

00:17:39.440 between Egypt and Israel.

00:17:41.700 Both insisted that they want

00:17:43.180 to continue fighting Israel

00:17:44.540 and they were competing

00:17:47.100 with each other

00:17:47.700 and not trusting each other,

00:17:49.020 but they were still a threat.

00:17:50.240 And so Saddam

00:17:51.840 invades Kuwait

00:17:53.380 with the Americans

00:17:54.700 giving a very

00:17:55.480 mealy-mouthed message

00:17:56.560 about whether or not

00:17:57.320 he should or shouldn't.

00:17:59.360 But for the Americans,

00:18:00.960 the real horror

00:18:01.760 is that from Kuwait,

00:18:03.760 Saddam could have

00:18:04.460 continued southwards

00:18:05.740 with nobody able

00:18:06.800 to stop him

00:18:07.500 into Saudi Arabia

00:18:09.360 and taken the eastern province

00:18:11.980 of Saudi Arabia.

00:18:13.460 And if he had taken

00:18:14.720 the eastern province,

00:18:15.760 he would have dominated

00:18:16.780 the oil industry

00:18:18.380 of the Middle East completely

00:18:19.620 because the UAE

00:18:21.760 would obviously

00:18:22.520 fall into his hands.

00:18:24.520 Qatar and Bahrain

00:18:25.360 would obviously

00:18:25.900 fall into his hands.

00:18:27.700 That combination

00:18:29.080 of Iraqi, Saudi,

00:18:31.880 Kuwaiti,

00:18:33.300 the rest of the Arab oil

00:18:35.660 would have reminded everybody

00:18:38.200 of the 1973 oil crisis

00:18:40.180 where the Arab states

00:18:41.920 decided to stop

00:18:44.560 supplying oil to the west,

00:18:46.960 causing a massive spike

00:18:49.000 in prices

00:18:49.580 that led to stagflation

00:18:51.720 and massive amounts

00:18:53.840 of inflation

00:18:54.380 that were not controlled

00:18:55.740 pretty much until

00:18:57.460 Reagan and Thatcher

00:18:58.340 took over

00:18:59.020 in the 1980s.

00:19:01.480 So that's why

00:19:02.540 the west panics

00:19:04.680 at Saddam's invasion

00:19:06.100 of Kuwait.

00:19:07.960 And they decide,

00:19:10.720 the Americans decide,

00:19:11.800 that they're going

00:19:12.220 to make a deal.

00:19:13.560 They'll give the Syrians

00:19:14.860 what they want in Lebanon.

00:19:16.960 in exchange for Syria

00:19:18.460 supporting the liberation

00:19:20.000 of Kuwait

00:19:20.640 from Iraqi forces.

00:19:23.020 And that deal

00:19:24.060 is pretty critical

00:19:24.780 because it comes

00:19:25.800 at the expense

00:19:26.400 of the Christians

00:19:26.960 who were still in control

00:19:28.060 of their own areas

00:19:28.860 in Lebanon.

00:19:30.520 And it reduces

00:19:33.200 Israeli ambitions

00:19:34.200 in Lebanon enormously.

00:19:36.520 And it means

00:19:38.220 that the Americans

00:19:40.800 have all of the

00:19:41.880 public legitimacy

00:19:42.920 that they need

00:19:43.960 to proceed

00:19:45.400 to proceed

00:19:45.420 with the liberation

00:19:46.140 of Kuwait.

00:19:46.960 And since then,

00:19:47.980 all we've seen

00:19:49.220 is the expansion

00:19:50.200 of American bases

00:19:51.280 all over

00:19:53.040 the Middle East,

00:19:55.620 including the UAE,

00:19:57.460 the Odeid Air Base

00:19:58.320 in Qatar,

00:19:59.320 the naval base

00:20:00.080 in Bahrain,

00:20:01.140 the expansion

00:20:01.740 of CENTCOM,

00:20:02.520 et cetera, et cetera.

00:20:03.900 So that deal

00:20:05.200 between the Americans

00:20:06.400 and the Syrians

00:20:07.600 pretty much created

00:20:10.780 the correct atmosphere

00:20:12.060 for the U.S.

00:20:13.580 to massively expand

00:20:15.100 itself militarily

00:20:16.140 all over the Middle East.

00:20:18.000 And it made the U.S.

00:20:19.540 the main hegemon

00:20:20.420 and it came

00:20:21.800 at the expense

00:20:22.580 of Israel

00:20:23.180 and the Lebanese Christians.

00:20:25.240 So that's

00:20:26.060 sort of important

00:20:27.360 to note.

00:20:37.600 you

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #18 ｜ The Syrian Civil War

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